Skill Set: Simple and Effective http://www.thetacticalwire.com/features/232097Excerpt:"There are no advanced skills. Responding to a threat is a matter of being able to apply the fundamentals." Simple is always better. Because it is more reliable. Simple is not easy. Simple things are often very difficult to do, and require self discipline to cause yourself to practice.

Why you should stop plinking and start training at the gun rangehttps://www.policeone.com/police-products/firearms/training/articles/430796006-Why-you-should-stop-plinking-and-start-training-at-the-gun-range/Excerpt: Training means knowing when it is time to seek professional instruction in order to push your individual limits to get better, faster and more accurate. A second set of eyes helps identify weaknesses and target areas of needed improvement. A quality firearms instructor will give you new ideas on ways to improve your weaknesses when practicing on your own. They can help you self-diagnose and self-correct your mistakes so you can work on improving your skills outside of class. In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know. Instructors can help bring your previously unknown weaknesses to light so that you can work on turning them into strengths.

Fact-based Decision Makinghttps://armedcitizensnetwork.org/fact-based-decision-makingExcerpt: After basic firearms training, people who's training has moved up through shoot house simulators to force on force will tell you that when they did their first simulator it was a mess. They made mistakes and their hearts pounded, but after a dozen times through the simulator it became fairly mundane. Then when they added force on force training, the training became much more challenging again. In one’s first force on force exercises, one becomes more excited and more agitated, and makes mistakes. You do that for a while, and you get better. What makes people think it takes any less practice to evaluate circumstances and make a decision while under pressure, under a compressed time frame, than it does to make a difficult shot under pressure? These are both skills that can be learned and practiced. Some will be better at either or both skills than others, but everyone will benefit from training and preparation.

For those of you who do not practice, Proverbs 13:4 ESV The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.Proverbs 10:4 ESV A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.Galatians 6:9 ESV And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

October 2017 Rangemaster Newsletterhttp://rangemaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017-10_RFTS-Newsletter.pdf Paint your front sight a color that will contrast with your probable targets.Excerpt: ". . . a big factor is the bad guy's training, education, and life experience. Most bad guys go through the entire careers without ever running into an armed citizen on the street. Only about 4% of the U.S. population has some kind of carry permit, and I'd bet less than 1% of them actually carry on a routine, daily basis. So, when a bad guy confronts a citizen who is actually armed and produces a weapon, the resulting mental lag time for the bad guy allows even an untrained or minimally trained defender a golden opportunity. The one who starts the fight has an enormous advantage. In this context, the bad guy started the incident, but the student starts the fight."

The company I work for, ATM Solutions Inc., requires us to wear at least level 1 retention holsters, because we open carry when servicing the automatic teller machines. I could not find an inside the waist band retention holster that I liked. Outside the waistband holsters flop
around when you move. With an inside the
waistband holster, your gun belt holds the holster
tight against your body. So, I got a Safariland GLS
holster (releases the pistol with pressure from
the middle finger when establishing a high tight grip),
unbolted it from the paddle that it comes with, and
bolted it to my Alien Gear leather holster backing. So far so good.

My Springfield Armory XD in .45 ACP was giving me a blister on the inside of my right thumb at the joint that connects the thumb to the hand (sesamoid bones). I'm right handed. So, I took a round file, removed a couple millimeters of the grip and rounded the area
of the grip that was rubbing. Leave the lines from the file. You don't want to take fine sand paper and make the finish smooth. You want the rough surface for a high friction grip. If you have sharp edges in the surface, scratch them off with your fingernails. The plastic is really soft. If you don't shoot a thousand rounds in a weekend in a high intensity course, you will probably never get blisters. I also got blisters on my brain.

My company is constantly posting reports of our colleagues getting shot (and sometimes killed) to prevent us from becoming complacent, so I bit the bullet and bought "soft" body armor. I got a Safariland Level III set. It has lots of adjustments. You really need someone who knows what they are doing to fit you with a proper set of body armor. (I went to Greene Military and Police in Nashville, TN.) Just as your pistol has to fit your hand. One size does not fit all. Overview of body armor, http://www.bulletproofme.com/Ballistic_Protection_Levels.shtml Thoughts for buying body armor,http://njlawman.com/Feature%20Pieces/Body%20Armor.htm National Instutute of Justice, Body Armor, https://www.nij.gov/topics/technology/body-armor/Pages/welcome.aspx Body Armor that Complies With NIJ Ballistic Resistance Standard, 0101.06 https://www.nij.gov/topics/technology/body-armor/Pages/compliant-ballistic-armor.aspx The truth is that once you wear it for a while, it becomes comfortable and you won't want to leave home without it. Just like your pistol. You have to wash the cloth carrier every week at a mininum. Otherwise, no one is going to sit next to you. My son would buy helmets and body armor at the gun shows, just to shoot them up to see what happens. But, if you're going to wear the armor for protection, buying at a gun show is not a good idea, because you don't know how old it is and you don't know what abuse it has suffered. Age is directly related to technology.

***** Instructors *****

"Give more than you have to, charge less than you can."-- Pat Goodale

To Be A Good Instructor, You Have To Be A Studenthttps://aaron-jannetti.com/2017/10/23/to-be-a-good-instructor-you-have-to-be-a-student/Excerpt: The first time I was in Israel for training, a group of us were having a conversation and the lead instructor said "When Imi gave us our black belts, he said 'congratulations . . . now go learn the next thing'." That’s profound right there. The guy that invented the system, gave him a black belt, then made a point to tell them to go learn something else. Expand your knowledge base.. . . If you do not MAKE TIME to be a student, you will fall into mediocrity. You will puff yourself up by telling yourself lies about how much you know and how the others don’t know shit.

***** Pedagogy *****

***** Education *****

Concealed Handgun Licensing: Asset to Texashttps://ssrn.com/abstract=3011938Abstract Collating conviction data reported by Texas Department of Public Safety, crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and census data, it’s possible to determine relative criminality of handgun carry licensees to their equivalent non-licensee population. This paper analyzes Texas carry licensees versus non-licensee Texans over age 21 to determine relative criminality, and also cites research enabling a comparison between police officer malfeasance and carry licensees. There are five sections in this report:• Conviction rates determine relative criminality of each population.• Carry licensees more law-abiding than police officers.• Carry licensees are more law-abiding than non-licensees.• Over 96% FBI crime reduction, if non-licensees were as law-abiding.• About $10 billion annual savings, if non-licensees were as law-abiding.

11 Research Based Concealed Carry Tips From Criminal Video Analysishttp://www.tierthreetactical.com/11-research-based-concealed-carry-tips/Excerpts: Prior to this analysis I would have thought that the vast majority of assaults and robberies, which is what these scenarios generally are, would have been one on one. This is simply not true!1. Carry a high capacity weapon, ideally 8 rounds or above. 2. Be able to access your gun with one hand. 3. Keep your head on a swivel, checking your 6, the most dangerous area. 4. Delay your draw. 5. Obscure your draw. 6. Do not engage immediately unless you must. 7. Practice pivoting and engaging threats 8. Practice gun grappling and one handed engagement within 3 feet 9. Shoot from cover if available 10. Practice shooting and moving at man sized target at 3-5 yards 11. Validate all live training with force on force training

Signs Someone Has a Hidden Gunhttp://guyjsagi.com/2017/10/11/signs-someone-has-a-hidden-gun/Excerpts: ". . . none (as in zero) of the criminals interviewed used a holster." "I always looked at their eyes, face and neck. People tense up before they launch and you can see this as their eyes narrow or squint, their facial muscles tighten and their carotid arteries in the neck throb as their pulse quickens." -- Ed Head

Texas man who shot, chased down Texas church gunman was NRA instructorhttps://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/6/stephen-willeford-no-hero-after-wounding-shooter/ The question is, "Why didn't anyone in the church shoot back? Why did a Good Samaritan have to rescue the congregation?" Some churches have publicly declared all of their facilities
to be weapon free zones. Even though Jesus told his disciples
to get swords, and if you don't have a sword,
sell your coat and buy a sword. Luke 22:36

For rifles, the effective range is the distance over which the bullet is supersonic. Rifle bullets come out of the muzzle at supersonic speed (except for smallbore rifles firing match ammo, whose bullets are subsonic from muzzle to target). This puts the bullet in front of its shock wave. So, the bullet is traveling through calm air. (And hence laminar flow, at least around the front of the bullet. The idea of a boat tail bullet is to reduce the area of the base of the bullet, because at the edge of the base is where laminar flow is lost to turbulent flow.) When the bullet makes the transition from supersonic to subsonic speed, it is traveling through its own shock wave. This means the bullet is moving through turbulent air, an unstable condition. For pistols, the situation is different. Some pistol bullets, such as a standard 230 grain .45 ACP comes out of the muzzle subsonic [about 850 feet per second (speed of sound is about 1100 to 1200 feet per second, depending on temperature, pressure, humidity, and other things)]. So, there is never a trans-sonic transition. For those bullets that leave the muzzle at supersonic speeds, such as most 9mm cartridges, over pistol ranges (25 yards) the bullet remains supersonic. The only problem you could run into would be when you reload or buy extremely light bullets at extremely high muzzle velocities. They could undergo sonic transition at pistol ranges. But, you can determine this, as there are many free online ballistic calculators. "Staff, that doesn't make sense. Won't a bullet with a higher muzzle velocity take longer to slow to subsonic speed than a bullet with a lower muzzle velocity?" No, at the speeds we are talking about, air friction is approximately proportional to the cube of the speed. So, the faster bullet suffers much more air friction, and so loses much more speed. A slow moving projectile suffers very little air friction. That's why precision air rifles (an Olympic sport) are so efficient. A car traveling at 55 mph is using about half of the energy from the engine to overcome air resistance. (Only half of the energy from the gasoline is converted to mechanical energy. The other half is lost as heat.Electric cars are stupid, because half of the electrical energy generated at the power plant is lost in the transmission lines. Where does the electricity come from? Burning oil and coal.)

***** Miscellany *****

If you would like the lesson plans for my NRA Defensive Pistol course, send me an email, and I'll send you the latest version.